Discussion

Pan to oven-roast vegetables then deglaze?

I recently had some leftover chicken spines (hello, spatchcock!) and thought I'd try oven-roasting them along with some vegetables to make a stock. I'm relatively new to cooking and have discovered the magic of the deglaze for pan-fried meats. So I thought I'd try to make use of the brown bits from the roasted veggies and chicken spines, but was stymied by what pan to use. I realized my non-stick jelly roll pans would not be good for a higher temp roast and certainly couldn't be deglazed stovetop.

Since foods need to be spread out to brown, I thought I should buy a pair or three of heavy duty stainless jelly roll / sheet pans that I could rotate on the oven racks like cookies. I don't own any stainless sheet pans but am willing to buy some. (Aluminum was a contender, but I think the reactivity could be a problem, since I like acidic things. For example, I wanted to roast lemon slices, and I like balsamic roasted veggies; I want these pans to be as versatile as possible.)

I suppose I could just do the browning in a frying pan, but it seems tedious since a lot of veggies are involved and would require multiple batches and lots of hand-holding. The oven method is more appealing.

So about those brown bits on a sheet pan…could I just take the pans out of the oven, add a deglazing liquid to loosen up the bits, scrape, and pour it all into a pan if I wanted to reduce it? It seems like I usually need to boil a pan and scrape with a wood paddle for a while to deglaze, and I'm thinking even a heavy duty stainless jelly roll pan on my glass stovetop might get warped (maybe even from the shock of deglazing?).

Or should I give up this idea of using the fond, and just roast the veggies on some parchment on some aluminum sheet pans and be done with it?

I do have a large roasting pan, I think an All-Clad. A couple of issues, though. First, it's not really flat bottomed - it has a big indent and gets major hot spots on the non indented parts. I'll know better for next time! The bigger issue is that I only have one roaster, and to spread out the veggies enough to brown, I'd need to roast multiple batches. (I kind of crowded my last batch of veggies and they never really browned for me.)

I think the high sides of the roaster might also impede browning, but I could be imagining that.

I mix in a glug of olive oil and stir a couple of times during the roasting phase, giving it a bit longer if more browning is desired. The carrots have most sugar I think, and thus tend to brown more easily. Also the presence of the chicken bits adds to the browning.

This clip doesn't show the last bit where Jamie passes the baby back to Jules and the baby starts yelling, much to Jamie's amusement and Jules's annoyance!